


Coffee for two

by villannelle



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, coffee shop AU, feat angelas lack of braincells when she sees amelie, mercymaker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23638750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villannelle/pseuds/villannelle
Summary: Angela risks being late to one of the most important meetings of her life for a chance to have her coffee served by a barista she barely even knows.
Relationships: Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	Coffee for two

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a coffee shop AU fic for the Mercymaker week day 1, organized by the always amazing AcousticMalta (here, on twitter and on insta).

One quick glance at her watch revealed it was 7:13. Angela rushed through the streets, quickly doing math in her head in an attempt to calculate how much time she would have to relax before chaos ensued.

She had, as usual, volunteered to partake in a new investigation conducted by one of her close friends and member of a recently assembled task force that had been temporarily established to help mitigate the emerging conflicts across the country in the past month.

Angela expected to face quite an awkward situation when the rest of the team found out a 25 year old would be taking part on the research. But then again, as a young woman in science, it wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to.

Winston had asked her to bring a more scientific and medical insight  
into an apparently very war centered conflict. Angela wasn’t so sure  
her input would be of much help, but Winston hadn’t really shared any details of the investigation with her yet, so there was no way of knowing for sure.

The fact that her medical knowledge could be of use in the prevention of a war, and what that assumption implied, was slightly terrifying.

Still, that wasn’t what had her mind and heart racing. Neither was it the fact that she was pretty much running through the streets or accidentally bumping shoulders with strangers that refused to make way for her.

Angela looked at her watch again. 7:16. She still had time.

It only took her four more minutes to get to her first stop on the way  
to the headquarters where she had been summoned, and when she did it was at the expense of her already messily crafted ponytail.

She wasn’t precisely skilled when it came to hair; all she did to take care of it was shampoo it whenever she had a little time, a task that, to be completely honest, was rarely achieved more than twice a week.  
As for styling, all she had ever learned to do as someone with hair that barely goes further than your jawline (she had been keeping it that length since she could remember, but lately getting a haircut was a use of her time that she could not afford), was quickly pull it up in a ponytail in the morning and hope for the best.

Right now, as she stood in front of the glass doors of a cafe and stared at the blend of sweaty hairs and incomprehensible curls that had become her head, Angela decided to quickly rip off the tie holding her mane together in an attempt to re-do her ponytail.  
This was supposed to be achieved while she held a notebook, a pencil and a book under her arm, forcing her to lean to the side to be able to reach the top of her head with her hand, while also pushing the door open with her foot as she skipped rather than walk into the establishment. 

Inevitably, the pencil she was holding slipped and fell to the ground. The sound made her look down, her hands still working to try to keep her hair together as she scanned the floor in search of her lost writing tool.  
Bending over to look for the pencil was, expectedly, a bad move. Just one turn of her torso prompted the rest of the items she was holding to fall onto the floor. 

The doctor let out a harsh sounding term that only german speaking bystanders would be able to understand and quickly finished off tying her hair together before crouching to pick up her things. She internally cursed herself for waking up late everyday while also expressly choosing to go out of her way to get her morning coffee here when she had so many options closer to her apartment.

Why would Angela go through all these inconveniences when there are dozens of cafes around her apartment, you ask? The reason was very simple.

A pale hand with long, thin fingers holding a pencil appeared in Angela’s line of sight as she put her book on top of of her lap. The blonde swallowed, finding such a simple task harder than usual, and then looked up at the just slightly sharp factions of the woman that crouched in front of her.

Her head was tilted to the side as she looked down at something, while Angela was too busy trying to untangle her thoughts to be able to form a coherent sentence before it was too late.

“Finding the nerve” the woman said with an impossibly thick french accent.

“Huh?” Angela quickly asked, disoriented, wondering if her sudden lack of courage was that evident.

A pair of hazel, impossibly cold eyes pierced through hers as the woman pointed one of her fingers down at Angela’s lap, where the book with the title “Finding the Nerve: The Story of Impedance Neurography” she had just picked up and placed on her lap was resting. Her other hand fixed the name tag on her chest that displayed the word ‘Amelie’.

Angela’s lips formed a perfect ‘o’, her eyebrows raising at the realization. Letting out a nervous laugh, the blonde ran her hand across her forehead and immediately smiled, relieved but embarrassed at her own misconception.

“Oh, this” after grabbing the pencil the other was offering, she held up the book in her hands with a notebook behind it, showing the woman the full cover. “Yes.”

What kind of reply was that?

“It’s very interesting, actually” Angela quickly continued, trying to keep the interaction’s awkwardness levels to a minimum. She brought the book down and stared at it, placing her hand on top of the cover. “It discusses research that basically explains the nature of nerve simulation via externally applied electrical fields, and how it has lead to pretty much an entirely new understanding of neuronal cell membrane biophysics and defined a new nerve imagining technology.”

By the time she realized how nonsensical her whole speech would be to someone with no previous neuroscientific knowledge, it was already too late.

Angela looked back up at Amelie and found her smiling, not exactly in a mocking manner but also not not in a mocking manner.

“Sounds very interesting indeed.”

Amelie started standing up and Angela did the same, her head hanging low as she pursed her lips and closed her eyes. Internally beating herself up for making a fool of herself wouldn’t help in this situation, but that sure as hell didn’t stop her from doing so. 

She made her way towards the counter as Amelie walked behind it, setting her belongings on top of it.

Angela had been frequenting the same cafe since two months ago, when she was in the area and the cafe’s name, ‘Odette’, caught her attention. She stopped by for a coffee and found it to be completely empty with the exception of two baristas, one of them being, you guessed it, Amelie.

Amelie sat behind the counter, chewing gum and using her phone. A man had taken her order that one time, and after giving her a warm smile he had turned around to look at the woman. After a few seconds, he clearly realized her coworker was clearly not going to move and sighed, walking away to start making Angela’s coffee himself.

The blonde was too busy anyway admiring the decor of the cafe, her head turned as she studied the rustic but chic details in the room, walking through the sitting space where she ended up picking a spot next to the window.

The moment she sat down and looked up to see how her order was going, Angela locked eyes with Amelie.

It was one of those weird, not too long but at the same time long enough exchanges that made you blush and wonder why you didn’t look away sooner. It was far too much eye contact to be making with a stranger, so Angela quickly averted her gaze and cleared her throat, shifting in her seat. She wanted to look up at the woman again, interested, and so she did, finding the other to be elegantly moving the other man out of her way and taking the paper cup he was using to finish off Angela’s order.

Once she was done, Amelie approached the counter, resting her forearms on it. She held the cup and read the name written on it as if she hadn’t done that herself.

“Angela.”

The blonde sighed, thinking the situation was a bit too theatrical for her taste since she was clearly the only one there. She approached Amelie with a tight smile and kept her eyes fixated on her coffee as she grabbed it. It had her name written on it, with a small heart next to it.

“Thank you” she said putting her hand around it. Amelie didn’t move hers away soon enough, causing them to graze fingers.

“Thank you” Angela heard the other say once she had started to walk away, clearly hearing the smile on her voice. “Come back soon.”

That was all it had taken for her to, indeed, go back very soon. And way more often than she liked to admit.

“Will you be having your coffee to go, or will you stay for a little bit today?” Amelie asked her now, tilting her head to the side as she looked at her from the other side of the counter.

“I can’t stay” Angela grimaced. “I wish I could.”

“Oh” Amelie whispered, pouting as she looked down and grabbed something from a place out of Angela’s line of sight. She placed a ceramic mug between them and sighed. “A long black with two extra espresso shots. I knew you would be coming around this time and kept this warm and prepared for you. I can transfer it to a paper cup if you want.”

Angela’s heart skipped a beat as she stared at the cup of coffee between them. She not only had remembered her order, but prepared it beforehand knowing at what time she would arrive? And on top of that, she was asking her to stay? Angela looked up at the clock in the wall in front of her. She still had around thirty minutes till her meeting, which was twenty minutes away. Surely she could spare ten minutes, right?

“Okay” the blonde tapped her fingers on the counter in front of her. “But just for a little bit.”

Amelie clasped her hands in front of her face, smiling, before placing them down on top of Angela’s for just a second.

“Yes, thank you. It’s so boring here, I think I will pass out if I spend one more minute listening that damned coffee grinder.”

Angela let out a soft laugh, grabbing her mug and turning around to sit next to the window. She sat down right on time to be able to see Amelie take off her apron, throw it to the side and say something in French to the other worker, who sighed and shook his head. Amelie didn’t seem fazed by his reaction though, she simply ran her hands through her hair to get it all out of her shirt and started walking towards Angela and taking a seat in front of her.

“So” Angela put her fist in front of her mouth and cleared her throat. “How’s it going?”

Amelie gave her one of her ‘really?’ looks as she rested her chin on the palm of her hands, a bored expression of her face. She always had that bored expression on, even when she tried to conceal it. She seemed a very hard woman to satisfy, which only drew Angela in further.

“I’m tired of this” she replied, playing with one of her long, absolutely perfect strands of hair.

“The cafe?”

Amelie nodded.

Angela knew from one of their previous conversations Amelie didn’t work there out of pleasure, or even for the money, but because her parents were forcing her to do so. She had dropped out of college where she was studying business management so she could one day inherit her father’s business. Her parents allowed her to do so under the one condition that, as long as she didn’t study, she would work in her family’s cafe franchise in an attempt to give her some discipline. Which clearly wasn’t working, since Amelie’s co workers were very clearly scared of the boss’ daughter. Not that Amelie needed to be the boss’ daughter to be scary, Angela had a feeling that she could do that very well on her own.

“I almost didn’t come in this morning” the barista said, her head turned to the side as she looked at her hair. Before speaking again, her gaze moved to Angela’s but kept her head turned to her right. “But I remembered you were coming in and decided to make an effort.”

Angela felt the blood rushing to her face as if it were a thousand ants running through her body.

She looked down at her butchered long black, the crema broken due to an obvious lack of experience from the barista who had poured it.

“You seem like a very…” Foolish? Spoiled? Childish? “...adventurous person. Why haven’t you told your parents you want to quit if you hate it here so much?”

“They won’t let me, not unless I go back to uni.”

“And why won’t you?” Angela could feel Amelie losing attention on the conversation as it entered a territory she was clearly not interested in. She struggled to reel her back in. “Maybe not business management, but maybe something else” she brought the mug to her lips, softly blowing on its content. “Something you’re passionate about.”

Amelie smiled, staring into infinity in front of her.

“I do have a passion” she almost whispered, letting go of her hair and bringing one of her hands to the side of her body, slowly moving it up her torso and softly skimming it with the back of her hand as she reached her face. “Dancing.”

“Dancing?” Angela asked, taken aback.

“Yes” Amelie didn’t seem at all affected by Angela’s surprise, which she was grateful for. “I love dancing, since I was a little girl. I love ballet. The movement...” her body swayed to one side, her eyes closed and a gentle smile on her lips, “...the emotion” she swayed to the other side, “it’s the poetry of the body, don’t you think?”

Angela was mesmerized by the sound of passion in Amelie’s voice, something she hadn’t heard since they had met. She felt stupid for how she had judged her in the first place, seeing her as someone with no aspirations just because she had dropped out of college. She should know better.

“And why don’t you pursue a career in dancing?”

“I want to” Amelie opened her eyes and frowned, sitting correctly once again and relaxing her posture. “But my parents don’t believe it’s a ‘real job’. I’m trying to save up for a course at the Académie des Arts Chorégraphiques, in Paris” her smile shined even brighter when she spoke of something she felt so strongly. “You’ll see me on one of the big posters they put all around the city one day.”

“I’m sure I will” Angela smiled. “I will be waiting for my tickets in the mail.”

Amelie looked back at her, an interested expression on her face as she wet her lips.

“Front row.”

Angela would blush again if she had ever stopped blushing in the first place.

“What about you?” She continued, dragging Angela’s book on the table to put it in front of herself, looking at the title once again. “Will you invite me to one of your… seminars, or whatever it is you science people do.”

The blonde laughed, sipping her coffee and shaking her head. “I don’t think you would enjoy it.”

Amelie brought a hand to her chest, her mouth hanging open as she faked offense. “I don’t assume you’re calling me stupid.”

“Oh- of course not!” Angela quickly replied, her eyebrows shooting up. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

Amelie laughed, throwing her head back for a moment.

“Relax Angela, I know.”

She watched her as she slowly put a strand of her behind her ear with her long elegant fingers. Such a simple action that sparked so much appetite inside Angela it felt almost outrageous. 

The french woman opened up the book, staring at a number written on the first page. She slightly frowned for a minute, quickly relaxing her expression before looking up, but not fast enough for Angela not to notice.

“What’s this? Keeping your dates’ numbers in your medical books? Sneaky.”

Angela laughed at the idea, knowing far to well she had never connected enough with a ‘date’ to even fathom the idea of calling them again.

“I wish. That incredibly long number is actually an entrance code.”

“Ooh” Amelie shook her shoulders, as if Angela had just told her a juicy secret and she was dying to know more. “Now I’m interested.”

“Well, there’s an entrance code for a reason. I can’t just air out my business like that.”

“Understood” Amelie accepted, pressing her lips together and nodding with her head. She grabbed Angela’s pencil and started doodling around the page. “Can I at least ask what the book is about? In terms that I can comprehend, at least.”

The woman’s reference to her previous word vomit made her internally facepalm.

“It’s hard to explain what it’s about. I think it would be easier to let you know that I’m working on a project about alzheimer's, and this book has relevant information for that.”

“Trying to find a cure, doc?”

“Trying is the key word there.”

“You’ll do it” Amelie mumbled, concentrated in her doodling as her cheek rested against her fist. She looked dreamy, Angela wished she could take a picture. “I’m sure.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I know these things.”

“What things?”

“These things” Amelie didn’t look up from the page in front of her, and Angela didn’t look away from her. “I can read people. Very easily. I can tell you’re amazing even though I barely know you.”

It was a weird compliment, especially in the way it was unpromptedly delivered, but for some reason it felt even more genuine than any other praise she had received before. She swallowed and smiled, nodding with her head. “Thank you, Amelie.”

“You’re welcome, Angela.”

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, something Angela was grateful and angry about at the same time. She wanted to keep this conversation going with Amelie, but at the same time it was a nice break from her lack of ability to form words whenever she was around the barista. 

After fishing it out of her pocket, Angela stared at the screen. It displayed a message that said: ‘Almost there. What about you?’. Winston was the sender.

The doctor quickly shot up, dragging the chair behind her and almost knocking it back. 

“Oh my God I’m gonna be late!”

Amelie looked up at her, closing her book and standing too while Angela struggled to put her coat back on. She handed her her things, and the blonde quickly pressed them against her chest with her arm as she tried to type a reply.

“Where did those twenty minutes go!?” She wondered out loud, walking towards the door with her gaze fixated on her phone.

“They say time flies by when you’re having fun, right?” Amelie replied with a laugh, walking next to her and opening the door for Angela as both of her hands were clearly occupied.

“Thank you” she muttered, still battling against her phone screen to type out a message. “Sorry I have to go, I’ll see you- oh, fuck, I haven’t paid yet.”

“It’s okay” Amelie shook her hand as a dismissal. “You can pay next time. That way I can be sure I’ll see you again.”

Angela’s brain was overcharged with information as she sent the message, tried to stop a taxi and called herself an idiot for not realizing how much time had passed, but not enough to be temporarily put on pause by Amelie’s usual casual flirting that she repeatedly told herself was nothing more than friendly banter.

“Seems fair. I promise I’ll come back” Angela said, walking backwards as her gaze jumped from the street to Amelie and back to the street a few times as she looked for a taxi to hop into. “Thank you so much, I had fun.”

“Me too. Bye chérie.”

The door to the Odette closed with the sound of the bells hanging on top of it, leaving a waving Amelie behind, and Angela finally turned around to jump into the one taxi that had taken pity on her and stopped to wait for her arrival.

She threw her things on the backseat and took her place next to them, quickly giving the driver instructions and paying more than necessary in advance to make sure he took the quickest route and hopefully ignored a few traffic laws to get her there quicker.

A few huffs and puffs and a couple curse words under her breath later, Angela decided to take a look at the entrance code to make sure she had it memorized by the time she got to her destination in an attempt to economize her time as much as possible, and by opening her book she was immediately faced by a ton of small, mostly senseless doodles that contrasted very heavily with the information displayed in between them.

But the second thing that jumped out as she looked at the book was a set of words that had been circled multiple times on the right margin of the page.

It was a phone number, with a text below it that read ‘for when you get tired of working. text me xx’.

She was very probably going to be quite late to the first meeting of one of the most important projects she had ever been involved in, but Angela couldn’t say she regretted it one bit.


End file.
